A clash of loyalties is dividing opinion among residents in Bakhmut - a town on the front line in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region.
ดาวน์โหลด slotxo is a game that makes everyone fun and happy. We've accelerated this section, so we've put together slots that are free to try. There is no charge whatsoever.
Sometimes it slips out as a whisper. More often, it is hidden behind euphemisms and shrugs - and carefully ambivalent replies. And then, once in a while, a fiercely pro-Russian sentiment is simply blurted out, like the crack of a gunshot, here in the rolling green hills of the Donbas.
"This is Russian territory. Ukraine is the occupier here," said a man in overalls, standing with a group of council workers. They had been clearing weeds in Bakhmut - a Ukrainian town currently within easy earshot of Russian artillery.
And the man was not alone in his apparent contempt for Ukraine's territorial integrity. Beside him, 65-year-old Yelena merely couched her views in more ambiguous terms.
"I don't know Putin personally, so I can't tell you what I think of him. But I don't see Russia as the enemy. We all lived together in the Soviet Union. So, let's see what happens [if Russia occupies the town]," she said.
The notion that Ukraine stands resolutely united in opposition to Russia's invasion may hold true for much for the country. But here in the Donbas, there is a large ethnic-Russian minority, a painful history of eight years of separatist conflict with Russian-backed militias and - particularly for an older generation - a powerful nostalgia for the USSR.